Ex-Alamance tax administrator facing scrutiny in Mecklenburg County

Published: Monday, January 28, 2013 at 08:57 AM.

After months of complaints about Mecklenburg’s 2011 property reappraisal, questions have surfaced about the county’s choice for a new revaluation manager.

In June, the county hired Kim Horton, a former tax administrator in Alamance County who presided over a botched revaluation in 2009 that triggered thousands of complaints of its own.

Horton left her Alamance job embroiled in a court dispute. County officials alleged she’d rigged a bid in favor of a Lincolnton appraisal company to help with the 2009 revaluation – without disclosing she’d been on the company’s payroll.

The county also said she authorized paying RS&M Appraisal Services more than double the $275,000 officials agreed to pay for the work.

That lawsuit, and other suits related to the case, were settled out of court. But some Mecklenburg commissioners are still perplexed by the hiring – given the public spotlight squarely on the county’s own revaluation problems.

The new questions come at a time when the county is paying a Wilson-based appraisal firm as much as $1.7 million to fix the reappraisal mess. In an initial study, Pearson’s Appraisal Service found dozens of inequities in a 15 percent sample of neighborhoods.

That prompted Mecklenburg commissioners to hire Pearson’s to look at all neighborhoods.

In the aftermath, the county’s tax assessor resigned, and state lawmakers from Mecklenburg are polishing off new legislation to get refunds for overtaxed property owners.

Mecklenburg County says Horton was properly “vetted” before she was hired.

Some commissioners aren’t so sure.

“Since it was such a top, sensitive story at the time – and it affected so many people – I have to question that hiring,” said board Chairwoman Pat Cotham, who was not on the board at the time. “It just doesn’t make common sense to hire someone who’d had a similar, recent problem in another county.

“If we weren’t dealing with our own revaluation problems at the time, then fine – I’m all for giving people a second chance. But a hire like this should have been under such scrutiny that the staff needed to be extra, extra careful.”

Lately, commissioner Bill James has been peppering top county officials with questions about the hire.

“I have concerns because our revaluation was so messed up,” James said, “and it appears (Horton’s) last revaluation in Alamance County was flawed. She also may have been involved in something unethical.”

The statement said Horton had 18 years of experience, including stints as tax administrator in Chatham and Alamance counties.

Questions about Horton were first raised by a citizens watchdog group in August, two months after she was hired.

County Manager Harry Jones said he had the concerns investigated by a county compliance officer, human resource staffers and Cary Saul, then director of the Land Use and Environmental Services Agency that oversees the tax office.

“They concluded there were some extenuating circumstances, but we felt it was a hire OK to make,” Jones said. “The lady wasn’t convicted of anything. I’m OK with the hire.”

At the time, then-Tax Assessor Garrett Alexander wrote in an email that Horton had been interviewed by a panel of employees in the real property division.

The panel, Alexander wrote, also “reviewed the issues” in Alamance “and found them to be politically motivated and unsubstantiated.

“Kim was recommended by the panel as being the most qualified and experienced candidate,” wrote Alexander, who in November resigned under pressure as Mecklenburg tax assessor but still works in the county’s finance department.

On Friday, Alamance County commissioner Linda Massey, who chaired the board during the 2009 revaluation, said no one from Mecklenburg called about a job reference for Horton.

“When I heard that Mecklenburg had hired Kim Horton, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, they should have called us,’ ” Massey said.

In May 2009, Horton gave the commissioners a resignation letter with a 30-day notice. “She said she couldn’t work under my leadership,” Massey said. “But we told her the next day she needed to pack up and be gone. We essentially fired her.”

Massey said the action wasn’t political.

Performance defended

Horton on Thursday declined comment on the matter.

But interim Mecklenburg Tax Assessor Bobbie Shields, a longtime county general manager, defended Horton’s performance in Alamance, saying she’d presided over a revaluation “at the peak of the recession. The market was continuing to decline, and it was only natural that there would be issues – the same as here.”

Emmett Curl, who replaced Horton in Alamance as interim tax administrator, said 8,000 to 9,000 appeals would have been normal. But because of a computer software change in the middle of the revaluation, the results “were a little out of kilter.”

“Some of the data didn’t migrate to a new system, and there wasn’t enough time to check behind that migration,” Curl said. “Overall, the revaluation was in pretty good shape.”

Two years later, Curl works for Pearson’s and is a central figure in fixing Mecklenburg’s revaluation that drew 42,000 informal appeals, about 11 percent of the county’s parcels.

With the tax office under reorganization now, Shields said Horton may not remain the revaluation manager.

Shields said she is a supervisor. “But when the next revaluation comes, we don’t know what process will be used at this point, or who’s going to do what,” he said.

Outside work

As new questions arose about the hire a week ago, Shields dismissed the concerns in an email to commissioners as “old news.”

He said in an interview with the Observer that he asked Horton about some of the Alamance allegations.

Horton, he said, acknowledged she’d worked for RS&M, the Lincolnton appraisal firm, while she was also the tax administrator, “but she said the people in Alamance County knew about it.”

In court depositions, Horton admitted her business relationship with RS&M and that she’d been getting payments from the firm’s president, Ronald McCarthy, since 2001.

She also admitted she didn’t disclose that relationship to Alamance commissioners and other officials.

McCarthy, in depositions, said the firm had paid Horton as an independent contractor on “a non-continual basis” since 2001.

He said he, too, didn’t tell commissioners about that relationship.

Alamance County Attorney Clyde Albright said the county didn’t know about Horton’s working relationship with RS&M until officials discovered they’d paid the firm more than $581,000 for its revaluation work. The original contract for RS&M’s help was $275,000.

The firm was supposed to be paid 20 installments of $13,750, and sued the county for the final payment. Alamance counter-sued, saying it had already “vastly overpaid” RS&M.

“Ms. Horton was authorizing invoices” for extra work, Albright said. “But they couldn’t get paid anymore without a budget amendment and a contract amendment.”

In the end, the lawsuits were dropped under a November 2011 agreement – though Massey, the Alamance commissioner, said her county was able to recoup about $175,000 that it’d overpaid RS&M.

The lawsuit dismissals shouldn’t have made a difference to Mecklenburg, Commissioner Karen Bentley emailed to commissioners.

“Her testimony under oath should have been enough to disqualify her from being considered for her current position – or any position – with the county,” Bentley wrote.

Need more answers

Some commissioners want to know more.

James continues to prod Jones and Shields for how much the county knew about Horton’s problems in Alamance before she was hired.

He said Jones has the authority to hire anyone “he pleases” and commissioners have the right to question those hires, but normally leave it up to the manager “unless extraordinary events exist.”

This, he said, is one.

“It all sounds like history repeating itself,” James said. “Given the sensitivity to revaluation in this county, you’d think (Jones) would have thought to broach this hire with the board. I think we deserve more answers.”

After months of complaints about Mecklenburg’s 2011 property reappraisal, questions have surfaced about the county’s choice for a new revaluation manager.

In June, the county hired Kim Horton, a former tax administrator in Alamance County who presided over a botched revaluation in 2009 that triggered thousands of complaints of its own.

Horton left her Alamance job embroiled in a court dispute. County officials alleged she’d rigged a bid in favor of a Lincolnton appraisal company to help with the 2009 revaluation – without disclosing she’d been on the company’s payroll.

The county also said she authorized paying RS&M Appraisal Services more than double the $275,000 officials agreed to pay for the work.

That lawsuit, and other suits related to the case, were settled out of court. But some Mecklenburg commissioners are still perplexed by the hiring – given the public spotlight squarely on the county’s own revaluation problems.

The new questions come at a time when the county is paying a Wilson-based appraisal firm as much as $1.7 million to fix the reappraisal mess. In an initial study, Pearson’s Appraisal Service found dozens of inequities in a 15 percent sample of neighborhoods.

That prompted Mecklenburg commissioners to hire Pearson’s to look at all neighborhoods.

In the aftermath, the county’s tax assessor resigned, and state lawmakers from Mecklenburg are polishing off new legislation to get refunds for overtaxed property owners.

Mecklenburg County says Horton was properly “vetted” before she was hired.

Some commissioners aren’t so sure.

“Since it was such a top, sensitive story at the time – and it affected so many people – I have to question that hiring,” said board Chairwoman Pat Cotham, who was not on the board at the time. “It just doesn’t make common sense to hire someone who’d had a similar, recent problem in another county.

“If we weren’t dealing with our own revaluation problems at the time, then fine – I’m all for giving people a second chance. But a hire like this should have been under such scrutiny that the staff needed to be extra, extra careful.”

Lately, commissioner Bill James has been peppering top county officials with questions about the hire.

“I have concerns because our revaluation was so messed up,” James said, “and it appears (Horton’s) last revaluation in Alamance County was flawed. She also may have been involved in something unethical.”

The statement said Horton had 18 years of experience, including stints as tax administrator in Chatham and Alamance counties.

Questions about Horton were first raised by a citizens watchdog group in August, two months after she was hired.

County Manager Harry Jones said he had the concerns investigated by a county compliance officer, human resource staffers and Cary Saul, then director of the Land Use and Environmental Services Agency that oversees the tax office.

“They concluded there were some extenuating circumstances, but we felt it was a hire OK to make,” Jones said. “The lady wasn’t convicted of anything. I’m OK with the hire.”

At the time, then-Tax Assessor Garrett Alexander wrote in an email that Horton had been interviewed by a panel of employees in the real property division.

The panel, Alexander wrote, also “reviewed the issues” in Alamance “and found them to be politically motivated and unsubstantiated.

“Kim was recommended by the panel as being the most qualified and experienced candidate,” wrote Alexander, who in November resigned under pressure as Mecklenburg tax assessor but still works in the county’s finance department.

On Friday, Alamance County commissioner Linda Massey, who chaired the board during the 2009 revaluation, said no one from Mecklenburg called about a job reference for Horton.

“When I heard that Mecklenburg had hired Kim Horton, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, they should have called us,’ ” Massey said.

In May 2009, Horton gave the commissioners a resignation letter with a 30-day notice. “She said she couldn’t work under my leadership,” Massey said. “But we told her the next day she needed to pack up and be gone. We essentially fired her.”

Massey said the action wasn’t political.

Performance defended

Horton on Thursday declined comment on the matter.

But interim Mecklenburg Tax Assessor Bobbie Shields, a longtime county general manager, defended Horton’s performance in Alamance, saying she’d presided over a revaluation “at the peak of the recession. The market was continuing to decline, and it was only natural that there would be issues – the same as here.”

Emmett Curl, who replaced Horton in Alamance as interim tax administrator, said 8,000 to 9,000 appeals would have been normal. But because of a computer software change in the middle of the revaluation, the results “were a little out of kilter.”

“Some of the data didn’t migrate to a new system, and there wasn’t enough time to check behind that migration,” Curl said. “Overall, the revaluation was in pretty good shape.”

Two years later, Curl works for Pearson’s and is a central figure in fixing Mecklenburg’s revaluation that drew 42,000 informal appeals, about 11 percent of the county’s parcels.

With the tax office under reorganization now, Shields said Horton may not remain the revaluation manager.

Shields said she is a supervisor. “But when the next revaluation comes, we don’t know what process will be used at this point, or who’s going to do what,” he said.

Outside work

As new questions arose about the hire a week ago, Shields dismissed the concerns in an email to commissioners as “old news.”

He said in an interview with the Observer that he asked Horton about some of the Alamance allegations.

Horton, he said, acknowledged she’d worked for RS&M, the Lincolnton appraisal firm, while she was also the tax administrator, “but she said the people in Alamance County knew about it.”

In court depositions, Horton admitted her business relationship with RS&M and that she’d been getting payments from the firm’s president, Ronald McCarthy, since 2001.

She also admitted she didn’t disclose that relationship to Alamance commissioners and other officials.

McCarthy, in depositions, said the firm had paid Horton as an independent contractor on “a non-continual basis” since 2001.

He said he, too, didn’t tell commissioners about that relationship.

Alamance County Attorney Clyde Albright said the county didn’t know about Horton’s working relationship with RS&M until officials discovered they’d paid the firm more than $581,000 for its revaluation work. The original contract for RS&M’s help was $275,000.

The firm was supposed to be paid 20 installments of $13,750, and sued the county for the final payment. Alamance counter-sued, saying it had already “vastly overpaid” RS&M.

“Ms. Horton was authorizing invoices” for extra work, Albright said. “But they couldn’t get paid anymore without a budget amendment and a contract amendment.”

In the end, the lawsuits were dropped under a November 2011 agreement – though Massey, the Alamance commissioner, said her county was able to recoup about $175,000 that it’d overpaid RS&M.

The lawsuit dismissals shouldn’t have made a difference to Mecklenburg, Commissioner Karen Bentley emailed to commissioners.

“Her testimony under oath should have been enough to disqualify her from being considered for her current position – or any position – with the county,” Bentley wrote.

Need more answers

Some commissioners want to know more.

James continues to prod Jones and Shields for how much the county knew about Horton’s problems in Alamance before she was hired.

He said Jones has the authority to hire anyone “he pleases” and commissioners have the right to question those hires, but normally leave it up to the manager “unless extraordinary events exist.”

This, he said, is one.

“It all sounds like history repeating itself,” James said. “Given the sensitivity to revaluation in this county, you’d think (Jones) would have thought to broach this hire with the board. I think we deserve more answers.”